Never Mind The Ballots: New found respect for Trump; Leo goes back to school

Wed, 05 Feb, 2020 - 19:36

Irish Examiner editorial

TAKEAWAY 1

Take note you canvassers and politicians with blisters, coughs and sore legs from the door-to-door campaigning.

One of the country's youngest candidates is taking inspiration from more senior politicians - albeit across the Atlantic - who don't moan or ease up in their campaigning.

Green party Mayo candidate Saoirse McHugh said, after three weeks on the hustings, she has gained a new found respect for US president Donald Trump and his likely presidential election opponents, Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden.

“I am physically shattered every night from canvassing around the constituency and then I see these guys in America who are over forty years older than me and who have been campaigning for nearly two years at this stage.

"Not alone do they have to get through one constituency they have to cover a massive country and all of them are in their seventies, Sanders is nearly eighty actually, so I look at them and go 'Wow'."

TAKEAWAY 2

Taoiseach Leo Varadkar visiting St Joseph’s College, Lucan, today with local Fine Gael candidate Emer Higgins. Pic: Douglas O'Connor

“Nobody reads manifestos Sean, you know that.”

Thus spoke Fine Gael’s Regina Doherty in advance of the campaign.

But yesterday the Taoiseach met a youthful audience that does read them, though unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately for Mr Varadkar, none of them can vote.

The politics class of St Joseph’s College in Lucan gave the Taoiseach a grilling on subjects ranging from the National Children’s Hospital to the rise of the far right, to a plea for guarantees that the school’s extension will finally be delivered after 15 years of waiting.

“They’ve sat down and read everything, and they have questions,” Mr Varadkar was told.

“They’ve read them all? Really?” was the incredulous response.

You could understand why he told the crowd shortly afterwards that he wouldn’t be cutting the voting age to 16.

TAKEAWAY 3

Journalists were licking their lips at the prospect of quizzing Tipperary TD Alan Kelly at a party event in Dublin yesterday.

But it was announced at the last minute that, as the Tipperary election vote was likely back on and with the funeral of Cllr Marese Skehan, he had made a quick dash back to his constituency.

All those thorny questions about Kelly's leadership ambitions will have to wait, probably much to the relief of leader Brendan Howlin.

But given Labour's dwindling opinion poll numbers, they could come sooner rather than later after the general election.

Kelly has said nada about the party's leadership in recent months, but the firebrand TD was conspicuous by his absence at Labour press events during the election campaign.

WELL SAID

I do, but not in this election.

Leo Varadkar, in answer to a schoolgirl’s question ‘do you think it’s important that in the future we have a female Taoiseach?’. He did add however that he hopes that a few glass ceilings that have yet to be broken, such as the positions of Finance Minister and Ceann Comhairle, will see their first female occupants in the aftermath of the election.